Vox Feminista founders plotting 'The Jamestown Flood - The Musical'

Local residents leading effort to tell stories of the flood on stage

Oak Chezar, seen here, and Joy Boston are trying to stage a production called "The Jamestown Flood - The Musical."
(
Cliff Grassmick
)

First came the devastation of the flood. Then, the recovery. Now... the musical?

Many along the Front Range still have good cause to be singing the blues over the damage caused by the historic rains of September. But two Jamestown women -- who are no strangers to challenging the dominant paradigm -- believe it's time to tell the whole story in a theatrical setting.

Oak Chezar and Joy Boston, two of three founders of the feminist radical theater troupe Vox Feminista, live on a shared property in Jamestown. Because they are situated on a hill above James Creek, they suffered no personal property losses in the disastrous storm.

But like everyone in the tiny mountain enclave, they were touched by the town's losses in countless ways. In fact, the spark for their new project was lit at a memorial service at the Greenbriar Inn for their friend Joey Howlett, former owner of the Jamestown Mercantile, the town's restaurant, music venue and central gathering spot. Howlett was one of four people to die during the flood in Boulder County; a mudslide crushed his house.

"At Joey's memorial service I was talking to another friend who was there, and I said Joy and I want to create a community event that's like a show about the flood, and he said, 'How about 'The Jamestown Flood -- The Musical?'" Chezar recalled. "I said, 'That's perfect.'"

If such a production sounds unlikely, particularly for a town that boasted about 300 residents before the flood -- and now has little more than one-tenth that number as rebuilding continues -- there is a precedent. This town has specialized in unlikely over the years.

Many still fondly recall "Hard Rock Fever," Jamestown's first original rock opera. It was a rowdy and tuneful tale of miners, prostitution and natural disaster staged in 2003 by Jamestown Area Artists and Musicians to raise money to restore the Jamestown Town Hall's rickety roof.

"Jamestown is about the most artistic community I've ever lived in," said Chezar, 58, a friend, creative and business partner of Boston's for more than 20 years. "Jamestown is filled with artists and musicians, a society of people who get together and put on shows and rocks operas and all kinds of things. It's all original stuff. Everybody always looks forward to the next JAM production."

Longtime Jamestown resident Nancy Farmer -- a self-described "Jimbilly," the self-deprecating label some locals use -- loves the idea of a flood musical.

"Participation in these events has a lot to do with the cohesiveness of the town," Farmer wrote in an email. "You might not know someone before, but once you've created and practiced and shared, you become family.

"I think 'Jamestown Flood, the Musical' is going to be an amazing production that will make audience members laugh and cry and bring them to their feet! Of course, first we have to write it."

Chezar admitted that some people she has approached to participate in the flood musical have not jumped at the idea. Jamestown saw 26 structures destroyed in the storm, according to the Boulder County Assessor's Office. The total in the county overall was 337.

"Some of them, they feel traumatized and they just want space from the event and they don't want to dive into the event," Chezar said. "But I'm a storyteller, and I just want to swim in it right now. I am. And it's lonely out here, in all the debris.

"I want them to hold hands and jump in and join in, in making something bigger."

Production is not yet under way. Boston, 61, has roughed out the outlines to a script for a multimedia show that is expected to be told in two halves, with an intermission. She said ideas have evolved simply from talking to people, hearing their stories from the flood, and compiling suggestions and ideas.

"We've tried to create a timeline of when things happened; what happened on the Wednesday night, what happened Thursday, and then Friday," Boston said. "The first part of the show would be the flood, and stories related to the flood.

"And then the second part would be the reconstruction, the healing, and this part would include FEMA coming in, the county coming in, the Texas Christian group that came in and helped us so much, and just the frustrations that people are having in dealing with their mortgages, and dealing with FEMA and dealing with the bureaucracy of filling out forms -- but then, you know, also some humorous things about it so we can laugh at ourselves."

The show will also touch on the themes of division -- the temporary division between the north and south sides of town riven by the flooded James Creek, but also the enduring split between the relatively few who are currently able to winter in Jamestown and the so-called "exiles," who have been temporarily displaced to Boulder and beyond.

The performance will progress toward a "wrapping up," Boston said, "about what we have learned from this experience, what we can do to help others who are going through it," even bringing in the topic of climate change and the seemingly increased frequency of extreme weather events.

"And at the very end," Boston said, "we would have to have a really rockin' song, in Jamestown style."

Two songs for the piece have already been written, and the women hope that weekly planning and writing sessions once the holidays are past will put the production on track for a premier at the Jamestown Town Hall by late spring.

"I would hate to do it just once," Chezar said. "Writing it and memorizing it is the hardest thing. My thinking is, once you've got it, show it, show the (expletive) out of it until nobody comes anymore.

"It would be great to do it two or three weekends in a row, and then take it to Denver or take it Boulder, and then see what we could do."

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